Monthly Archives: May 2012

Judge Leon today stayed the federal court case captioned Dean v. NBC until the previously-filed and pending Superior Court action between the same parties is resolved. The Court’s order reads: MINUTE ORDER granting nunc pro tunc 2 Defendants’ Motion to Stay or, in the Alternative, for an Order Extending Time to Answer or Respond to the Complaint. It is hereby ORDERED that the motion is GRANTED; and it is further ORDERED that this action is stayed pending final resolution of Dean v. NBC Universal et al., Case Number 2011 CA 006055 B, currently pending in the Superior Court of the …

Rachel Maddow and the related NBC defendants today filed their reply brief in support of their anti-SLAPP motion. After initially arguing that the plaintiffs’ opposition had failed to respond to the majority of their arguments, they address the two attacks on the statute – that it violates the Home Rule and is inapplicable in federal court. Defendants first argue that the Home Rule and its legislative history “are devoid of any indication that Congress intended to prohibit the Council from enacting legislation that conferred substantive rights on defendants that are targeted with meritless litigation as a result of speaking on …

3M today filed its reply brief in support of its motion to dismiss the Davis defendants appeal. 3M’s tight and focused argument is: (a) denials of motions to dismiss are generally not immediately reviewable; (b) that general rule is subject to limited exceptions when the motion involves immunity from trial; but (c) the anti-SLAPP statute does not provide any such support for the proposition that the statute was intended to provide immunity from trial. Last month, of course, the Davis defendants and the District of Columbia argued in opposition to 3M’s motion that the legislative history of the anti-SLAPP statute …

Bradley Dean today filed his opposition to the anti-SLAPP motion filed by Rachel Maddow and others in response to his federal court action. Given that he expressly refiled his Superior Court case in federal court as part of a strategy to gain the benefit of Judge Wilkins’ decision in 3M v. Boulter, it comes as no surprise that his brief relies heavily on that decision. Dean also argues, as he had argued in the Superior Court, that that anti-SLAPP statute violates the Home Rule Act. While the Home Rule argument has been made in several cases (see here, here, and here), …

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